An LTE (Long Term Evolution, Long Term Evolution) base station serves as a data forwarding device. Before data received by the base station is scheduled to a UE (User Equipment, user equipment) corresponding to the data, the received data first needs to be buffered in the base station, and after a specific air interface resource is allocated to the UE by means of air interface scheduling, the base station then utilizes the resource to send the buffered data to the UE. However, buffer capacity of a base station is limited, and transmission of service data has to meet a specific delay requirement. Even if data has not been successfully sent to a UE, the base station cannot buffer received data unlimitedly. Therefore, a packet discard control mechanism is generally necessitated in a base station, to ensure that a volume of buffered data in the base station does not exceed buffer capacity of the base station, thereby preventing overflow of the buffered data.
As defined in buffer management specifications for LTE base stations, a packet discard control mechanism of a base station is implemented by using a “packet discard timer”. After an LTE base station receives an IP data packet from a core network, a packet discard timer is started for the received IP data packet, where the packet discard timer is used to serve the following purposes:
control a buffer of the base station: prevent the buffer of the base station from being occupied by the IP data packet for a long time, and release buffer space in time for accepting a new IP data packet; and
control an air interface transmission delay of the IP data packet: prevent the IP data packet from being buffered at the air interface for an excessively long time, and when a QoS (Quality of Service, quality of service) delay requirement is not met, prevent unnecessary data transmission and a resulting waste of bandwidth.
However, depending on time, different services have different bearer bandwidth requirements and different requirements on buffer management of a base station. For example, to accelerate playback of stream media at the initial playback moment or when fast forwarding occurs, a large amount of stream media data needs to be sent to a UE in the initial downloading phase. However, after the large amount of data arrives at the base station, the base station starts a millisecond-level packet discard timer, and the large amount of “downloaded data packets” received by the base station may be discarded by the wireless base station due to timeout being successfully transmitted to the UE. If the stream media is carried by the TCP (Transmission Control Protocol, Transmission Control Protocol), lost data is retransmitted continually due to the reliable transmission nature of the TCP, thereby substantially affecting video transmission quality and user experience.